sabato 12 luglio 2014

Sonata 1 in A majorSonata 2 in e minorSonata 3 in D majorSonata 4 in A majorSonata 5 in a minorSonata 6 in D majorSonata 7 in G majorSonata 8 in C majorSonata 9 in Eb majorSonata 10 in f# minorSonata 11 in g minorSonata 12 in G major

venerdì 11 luglio 2014

Style elegance, balance, refinement, flowing ornamentation, sumptuous sound; the new arcadians of Chiara Banchini play ideally this spiritual son of Corelli who opens the way to Vivaldi... Fascinating and exquisitely played”--

This is an entrancing CD, with dances, laments, and feast-day songs linked in a slow-quick-slow structure. Perhaps as an implicit tribute to Montserrat Figueras, there are no vocal numbers, but the musicians Savall has assembled from the relevant countries display a wonderful range of virtuosity. It’s a shame the strictly musicological information in the book is so inadequate, because much could have been made of the variety of guises in which the flute and the fiddle make their appearance. In the hands of Bora Drugi´c, the humble frula – Serbia’s answer to the recorder – can get the joint jumping in a rollicking dance, or call up wistful nostalgia; on the longer, end-blown kaval, Nedyalko Nedyalkov can evoke the immense sadness of a Gypsy lament, or weave dainty patterns in a Cretan circle dance. Peyo Peev’s nimbleness with the bowed Bulgarian gadulka is matched by Derya Türkan’s on the kemanche spike-fiddle. Gyula Csík’s cimbalom finds its Middle-Eastern answer in the plucked kanun. And as one might expect, the violin proper surfaces all over the place. At the end Savall plays a newly-composed elegy on the soprano viola da gamba for a woman who has left the village to get married in the big city: there could be no more moving testament to the wife who has gone on ahead.

This disc presents a programme of music from the three countries where in the 16th and 17th centuries the viola da gamba was most popular: Spain, France and England. All pieces are based on bassi ostinati, musical patterns which are repeated throughout a musical composition. Several names refer to such patterns; one of them is La Gamba which gave this disc its title.

These patterns all find their origin in the renaissance, but they were used well into the 18th century. The programme's thread are compostions by two exponents of composing music based on bassi ostinati: Diego Ortiz and Christopher Simpson.

Ortiz was one of Spain's most prominent composers of the 16th century. His recercadas are part of his treatise Trattado de glosas sobre clausulas y otros generos de puntos en la musica de violones. The term violones refer to the viola da gamba, but his treatise could be used by any instrumentalist who wanted to extend his knowledge about ornamentation. The second part contains eight recercadas for viola da gamba and keyboard over bassi ostimati. All of them have been included in this programme.

Christopher Simpson was one of England's most virtuosic viol players and the most important writer on music. In 1659 he published The Division-Violist, or An Introduction to the Playing upon a Ground, which was reprinted in 1665 under the title The Division-viol. The third part of this treatise is devoted to "The Method of ordering Division to a Ground". Included are a number of pieces for viola da gamba solo (the Preludes played here) and for viola da gamba with basso continuo (the Grounds).

The third country which is represented here is France, where the popularity of the viola da gamba lasted longer than in England and Spain. Until the middle of the 18th century composers continued to write music for it, despite the strong competition of the 'Italian' instruments violin and cello. At that time Marin Marais had already died. He was generally considered one of the greatest gambists of his time. He published five books of pieces for viola da gamba and bc, between 1686 and 1725. The second book of 1701 includes the Folies d'Espagne, a series of 32 couplets on one of the most popular ground basses of the baroque era, La Folia.

The other great gambist of that time was Antoine Forqueray, who was a different personality and who - unlike Marais - wanted to incorporate Italian influences into his compositions. The latter word is not quite correct, though, as he never published any of his works. He emphasized the importance of improvisation, and didn't like to play fixed music. The only pieces by Forqueray are those which were published by his son Jean-Baptiste. But musicologists are still not sure as yet whether these are really by Antoine, or rather by his son, who pretended them being written by his father. From this oeuvre we get a chaconne, one of the most popular forms in French music in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Many suites included a chaconne, and no opera could do without at least one.

The
violinist Giuliano Carmignola is pictured on his motorbike on the cover
of this collection of six concertos played "con moto" (with a motorcycle
in italian), and the sound is indeed hard-driven and exciting, full of
those pulsating unisons and relentless sequences with which Vivaldi
powers his music. But there is also incredible delicacy and refinement
here, and Carmignola's wiry sound is a world away from the tubby, rich
Vivaldi performances of yore. There are countless angular surprises, one
echo of Bach's Third Brandenburg, and one concerto which ignores the
violin's top string, showing Vivaldi's continual inventiveness. Superb
support from the Accademia Bizantina.

As they are treated here in the hands of veteran British Baroque violinist Simon Standage, it's hard to understand why the violin sonatas of Jean-Marie Leclair are not cornerstones of the solo violin literature. Perhaps it's that they have a subtle balance of elements that only Standage has brought out fully -- they are in what theorist J.J. Quantz called the "mixed style," fusing French decoration with Italian melody. The movement structures of the sonatas are a perfect mixture of French and Italian; consider the Violin Sonata Op. 9, No. 1 that opens the disc, with its sequence of Adagio, Allegro assai, Andante, and Minuetto movements (the last being a French dance with an Italian name). The beauty of this music resides not just in the mixture of elements but in the way Leclair makes that mixture seem utterly natural: long-breathed melodies soar and emote, yet glisten with ornaments like long stalks of hyacinth. Standage is comfortable with the lyricism of the music, with the icier quality of the ornamentation and the general level of technical difficulty, and with the curious experimental touches that creep into these late works by Leclair. He performs with the accompaniment of only a harpsichord part (rendered ably by Nicholas Parle), believing that a larger continuo group would be redundant here. His decision seems sound, for his performance asks for nothing to be added. The sonatas are separated by harpsichord "portrait" works, one by Forqueray representing Leclair, and two by other composers representing Forqueray; these are pleasant diversions even if they slightly lessen the focus on Leclair's music. Yet another recommendation for this superior single-disc treatment of a body of work by a Baroque composer is the sound -- arrestingly bright without harshness.

martedì 8 luglio 2014

One of the most powerful performances of Schubert’s ‘Erlkönig’ I have ever heard was by von Otter and Tan: responses to text and setting flashing from one to the other across the backdrop of a terror-stricken fortepiano. Here, mezzo and fortepianist travel back in time to the songs of Mozart and Haydn, to no less revelatory effect. The shorter, yet keenly expressive resonance of the fortepiano leaves the voice as prime mover in Mozart’s little salon melodramas. And in the French settings, von Otter’s voice takes on the matt pastel tones of Gustavian taste, very much the francophile Swede in period action. Haydn’s melodrama stretches to the concert scena Arianna a Naxos, a solo cantata in which the fortepiano does not wake Arianna too harshly from sleep and dream, yet provides a strong zoom lens for her anguished sighting of Teseo’s departing fleet. Haydn’s Mermaid and Sailor songs are favourite party pieces: the glinting waves of the one and the rolling seas of the other call forth from them some audacious and totally stylish ornamental abandon.

lunedì 7 luglio 2014

Of the mighty series of recordings by Catalonian gambist and conductor Jordi Savall and his associated Capella Reila de Catalunya and instrumental group Hesperion XXI, this is among the most impressive. Savall's method is to use music to illuminate vast swaths of historical event and theme, and he has rarely been so ambitious and so successful as he is here. His topic is the Dinastia Borja, or the House of Borgia, who emerged in the 14th century from Savall's home ground of Valencia to play a dominant role in Italian ecclesiastical and political life for two centuries. The Borgias were politically skilled, but their true genius, much like figures of modern entertainment, lay in their ability to generate and control a fascinating atmosphere of sexuality, intrigue, and corruption, "the fatal power of legend," as the 300-page booklet puts it. The program of the three CDs spans a few hundred years, and it is divided thematically into these categories: "The origins and rise of the Borgia family," "The demise of the three cultures and the conquest of power: the Vatican," "The culmination and end of a dream," "The age of upheavals and Humanism: the Sibyl and the Prophecies of the Book of Revelation," "Battles and truces; military and political responsibilities," "Renunciation and spiritual transformation," and "Final years, death and canonization of Francisco de Borja." All of these things are reflected in the musical genres of the day, which have very rarely come alive as they do here. There is no space to enumerate the musical-historical linkages Savall and his troupe explore, but suffice it to say that a college course on the Borgias or the Italian Renaissance that used this recording as a text would make a deeper impression than probably any other one out there. Not to be missed.

Virgin Classics present the world-premiere recording of L’Oracolo in Messenia, an opera prepared by Vivaldi for Vienna in 1740 after its premiere in 1738 in Venice. Fabio Biondi leads this triumphant performance, which opened the 2011 Resonanzen festival in the Austrian capital with a high-powered cast including Ann Hallenberg, Vivica Genaux and rising soprano Julia Lezhneva.

Vivaldi expert Fabio Biondi has reconstructed the work from literary and musical sources – notably a libretto recently discovered at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. This musicological feat follows the example Biondi set with two other Vivaldi operas recorded for Virgin Classics, Bajazet and Ercole sul Termodonte.

Vivaldi hoped for performances of the work in Vienna during Carnival in 1741, but in October 1740 the Austrian Emperor, Charles VI, died suddenly and Austria’s theatres were closed for a year of mourning; so Vivaldi’s plans came to nothing and he himself died in Vienna in 1741, alone and poor. L’Oracolo in Messenia was finally staged in the city in 1742 at the city’s Kärntnertor Theatre, starring Anna Girò, Vivaldi’s favourite prima donna, as Queen Merope.

Appropriately enough, this recording was made in Vienna. It captures the opening performance of the 20th season of the prestigious Resonanzen festival of early music, which takes place at the city’s Konzerthaus. The impressive cast comprises soprano Julia Lezhneva, mezzo sopranos Ann Hallenberg (as Queen Merope), Vivica Genaux, Romina Basso and Franziska Gottwald, counter tenor Xavier Sabata and tenor Magnus Staveland. Fabio Biondi leads his own ensemble, Europa Galante, from the violin. The performance was greeted with a standing ovation and the media were lavish in their praise; indeed the Wiener Zeitung said that: “the festival could not have launched its 20th anniversary in more triumphant fashion”.

The group's founding director, Stevie Wishart, conceived of Sinfonye as a group combining improvisatory skills derived from traditional music with performance practices recreated from historical research and is particularly interested in repertories sung, inspired or composed by women. In 1987, Sinfonye was awarded the highest prize in the Festival van Vlaanderen in Brugge and, joined by Andrew Lawrence King, made their first recording, Bella Domna, for Hyperion. Following an acclaimed London debut in 1988, Sinfonye performed at the Wigmore Hall for the International Prizewinners series, and, joined by Vivien Ellis in 1989, made a second Wigmore Hall appearance as part of their debut British tour for the Early Music Network.

'The disc is irresistible. The singing and playing are ravishing, the sound immediate and caressing. This month's list is full of unfamiliar things but this may be the loveliest' (Fanfare, USA)

'I'm not sure what medieval ears would have made of it but there's no denying Sinfonye's capacity for alerting us to a small but distinctive repertoire from an age and mentality essentially no different from our own' (BBC Music Magazine Top 1000 CDs Guide)